The Syntax And Semantics Of The Passive Constructions In Yucheng Dialect

This thesis mainly discusses the syntax and semantics of the passive constructions in Yucheng dialect of Shandong Province under the framework of the Generative Grammar.Yucheng is a city of Dezhou in Shandong Province.At present,the study of the syntax and semantics on the passive constructions in Yucheng dialect is relatively inadequate.The study on passive constructions in Dezhou dialect can only be found in the published literature Dezhou Dialect(1991).Based on a test of 20 local people from different social groups,several passive constructions with different examples in Yucheng dialect are concluded,including jiao and rang passive constructions,gei passive construction and and the passive construction and unaccusative construction with nong.The aim of the thesis is to make a fine-grained depiction and description on the syntactic distribution and semantics on the several constructions and to find out the syntactic status of these markers.The study is mainly divided into the following aspects.Firstly,we study the syntax and semantics of the jiao and rang passive constructions.In Yucheng dialect,we tend to use jiao and rang instead of bei to express the semantics of long passive construction.The structure is ‘NP1 jiao/rang NP2 VP’.The patient NP1 can be omitted in a certain context.Jiao and rang are usually used in realis sentences,or specifically they are used in sentences describing past events.But this is only a tendency,not a constraint.In Yucheng dialect,they can be used in irrealis sentences.Besides,jiao and rang can be used in passive constructions of retained object(PCRO)with the structure ‘NP1 jiao/rang NP2 VP NP3’,where NP1 is the experiencer,NP2 is the agent and NP3 is the patient.NP1 must be animate and forms a possessor-possessee relationship with NP3.The patient NP3 can be modified by an adjective or a classifier,but cannot be modified by a demonstrative pronoun.In addition,ba and gei can also appear in the jiao/rang passive construction,forming the structure ‘NP1 jiao/rang NP2 ba NP3 gei VP’.This thesis believes that jiao and rang are verbs in long passive construction in Yucheng dialect and the experiencer NP1 is base-generated.Jiao and rang take the IP clause as the complement.Unlike other prepositions which can be moved with the following NP,verbs jiao and rang can also be modified by the negative word mei ‘don’t’.the subject-oriented adverb can prove that the experiencer NP1 is base-generated.According to Binding Condition A,ziji ‘self’ possesses its reference inside IP clause,which proves that jiao and rang take IP as the complement.The ungrammaticality of the appearance of the pronoun shows there is NOP movement inside IP clause and the experiencer co-indexes with the NOP semantically.Secondly,we study the syntax and semantics of the gei passive construction.In Yucheng dialect,we tend to use gei instead of bei to express the semantics of short passive construction.The structure is usually ‘NP1 gei VP’.Gei needs precede VP directly and cannot be followed by an NP in Yucheng dialect.This paper considers gei as a verb,and its experiencer is base-generated,which can be testified by inserting subject-oriented adverbs and manner adverbs at different positions in a sentence.Different from the syntactic status of bei in short passive construction in Mandarin,gei can be combined with bei,jiao or rang,forming the structure ‘NP1 bei/jiao/rang NP2 gei VP’.In the structure,gei is an auxiliary word used for emphasizing the‘suffering’ meaning.This explanation is also used for the ungrammaticality of ‘NP1bei NP2 bei VP’.What’s more,in the passive structure ‘NP1 bei/jiao/rang NP2 gei VP’,either ‘bei/jiao/rang NP2’ or gei can be omitted,but they cannot be omitted simultaneously.Finally,we study the syntax and semantics of verb nong preceding passive constructions and the unaccusative construction.Different from generalized verb nong in Mandarin,nong in Yucheng dialect is a verb and takes IP as the complement.The structure for verb nong is usually ‘(NP1)nong CL NP2 VP’.NP1 is [+ANIMATE],and is always omitted in most circumstances.In this structure,the following part after nong is embedded IP.CL,NP and VP are limited in use,and the structure shows main clause effect.Nong appears at the beginning of a sentence to express an unpleasant meaning,causative meaning,the difficulty in finishing the event and unexpected meaning.These semantics are developed from the semantic meaning of the generalized verb nong directly or indirectly.